Universal Join Table?

[C L]

I’m considering dropping all my join tables in favor of one *universal* join table. My universal join table would include these columns: parent_table, parent_id, child_table, child_id. It would allow me to associate a row in any table to a row on any other table. In theory it would also allow me to associate one join in the universal join table with another join in the universal join table, thus allowing for representation of complex relationships.

Is this a common database technique? If so, does it have a name?
Is this technique recommended?